All information about you is stored confidentially and securely on password protected systems and not shared with any other agency without your permission. Only the necessary people will see your details such as your counsellor, coach or worker.
Below are responses to some of the most common questions that are asked about the services provide Cygnus Support.
Cygnus Support
Anyone who is a resident of Northumberland aged 14+ can access the general counselling and domestic abuse counselling services.
To make a referral, please complete our online referral form and we will be back in touch once we have received this.
Be You Programme
Any parent, carer and/or guardian of Primary and Secondary aged children in the Trailblazer School Areas of Ashington, Bedlington, Blyth and Hexham may use this service.
Please note that the Be You service is NOT a service for Young People, it is an adult only service. Young people may access general counselling service as mentioned above.
Bereavement Support
Any resident in Northumberland aged 13+ whose mental health and wellbeing is primarily impacted by a bereavement may use this service.
Solid Foundations
Any resident of Northumberland aged 16+ who is unemployed and not in paid work may use this service.
Social Prescribing
Patients of the Wansbeck PCN (Seaton Park, Bedlingtonshire, Gables or Guidepost GP Surgeries), can use this service.
No, all of our services are completely FREE for anyone to access.
We are open Monday - Friday between 9am - 4:30pm.
Our last counselling session(s) for each day will start at 3:30pm.
Please Note: We are not a Crisis Team nor are we available 24/7. Should you require any urgent support, click here for a list of available options.
We are able to deliver support in a variety of ways to suit the needs of each individual client.
We offer face-to-face appointments at our office in Ashington. We may be able to offer appointments at other venues across the county, but this is subject to change and dependent on counsellor availability at the time.
Necessary safeguarding procedures must be followed by both staff and clients during in-person appointments.
We can also offer remote support either via telephone or a video call (Zoom, Teams, etc.) should a client prefer or is unable to attend in-person.
General Counselling
8 counselling sessions will be available to you.
Domestic Abuse Support
6 sessions will be available to you.
Bereavement Support
8 Sessions will be available to you.
Solid Foundations
Between 8-15 sessions will be available as part of the Solid Foundations offer.
In certain circumstances more counselling sessions may be be made available to you, but this is on a case-by-case basis. If you have completed counselling with us but feel you still require additional support, you are more than welcome to submit a new referral form.
If you have started attending counselling, made a referral and would like to withdraw it, and/or you feel you no longer require our services, please speak to you counsellor, coach or worker about ending with them early. You are under no obligation from us to attend if you no longer wish to.
No, none of our services are not mandatory, meaning you are not forced to take part.
We ask that if you do decide you no longer wish to participate to let your counsellor, coach or worker know as soon as possible.
All of our services are completely voluntary and you are under no obligation from us to keep attending. If you feel our services are not for you, or you feel they are no longer required, you can request to end them.
Please get in touch with us if you are unable to attend a session, or wish to end your sessions early, otherwise this can end up costing the service money.
We understand that things might crop-up last minute and you may not be able to attend an appointment.
We ask that you let us know in advance if you are unable to attend and provide us with a reason. We will then attempt to reschedule the appointment.
Failure to attend two consecutive appointments without formally cancelling or without advance notice will result in you being discharged from the service.
We only share information where required by law or with carefully selected contractors and specialists to help us provide our services. We only share Data with other companies who are GDPR or ISO 27001 compliant. We are careful to minimise such sharing.
We may also share your Personal Data if:
- The Law or a public authority says we must share that Data
- We need to share personal Data in order to establish or defend our legal rights, this includes providing personal Data to others for the purposes of preventing fraud and reducing credit risk to any other successors in title to our business
- There is a safeguarding issue
Please see our Privacy Policy for full details.
Once we have received a referral from you, the next steps are as follows:
- You will be contacted to arrange an assessment/triage appointment. This is completed over the phone with you and is as much for our benefit as it is yours. Please note, due to the large volume of referrals we are receiving, and being a charity with a small team of dedicated staff and volunteers, it may take up to 4 weeks to complete the triage/assessment process.
- Once the triage/assessment process has been completed, you will either be signposted to another organisation if we are unable to offer support or be added to our waiting list for a counselling appointment.
- There will be a minimum of a 3 month wait time, although this may be slightly longer depending on the volume of referrals we are receiving. We are working hard to keep wait times as low as we possibly can.
Feel free to have a look at the self-help page where you will find some useful information, resources and other places to go for support whilst on our waiting list.
If you think there is something missing, your question is not answered and you cannot find it elsewhere on our site, or should you just wish to know more information about the services provided at Cygnus Support, feel free to send us a message by clicking the button below.
